Wet products such as wet wipes have many applications. They may be used with small children and infants when changing diapers, they may be used for household cleaning tasks, they may be used for cleaning hands, they may be used as a bath tissue, they may be used as by a caregiver to clean a disabled or incontinent adult, or they may be used in and for a whole host of other applications, where it is advantageous to have a wipe or towel that has some wetness or moisture in it.
Wet wipes have been traditionally dispensed in sheet form from a tub like container with a hinged lid on the top. The lid is opened and individual or singularized sheets of the wipes are removed. Another type of container that has been used for wet wipes provides a roll of wipes in which the wipes are pulled from the top of the container in a direction that is parallel to the axis of the roll. These wipes are pulled from the center of a hollow coreless roll that has perforated sheets. These containers generally have a snap top lid that is opened to expose a piece of the wipes that can then be pulled to remove the desired amount of wipes. Once pulled out the wipes can then be torn off, usually at a perforation, and the lid closed.
Wet wipes can be any wipe, towel, tissue or sheet like product including natural fibers, synthetic fibers, synthetic material and combinations thereof, that is wet or moist or becomes wet prior to use. Wet wipes may be dispersible when in contact with water or may be non-dispersible. Examples of wet wipes are disclosed in application Ser. Nos. 09/564,449; 09/564,213; 09/565,125; 09/564,837; 09/564,939; 091564,531; 09/564,268; 09/564,424; 09/564,780; 09/564,212; 09/565,623 all filed May 4, 2000, and application Ser. No. 09/223,999 entitled Ion-Sensitive Hard Water Dispersible Polymers And Applications Therefore, filed Dec. 31, 1998, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference. Embodiments of dispensers are described in U.S. application Ser. No. 09/659,307, entitled “WET WIPES” filed Sep. 12, 2000, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
Dispensing a plurality of wet wipes is desirable and advantageous for perineal cleaning. Similar to conventional dry toilet tissue usage, users want control and discretion over the number of separable sheets at their disposal. Dispensing a single sheet at a time can be undesirable to the user and can complicate the use of wet wipes designed for perineal cleaning. Thus, there is a need for a wet wipes dispensing system that is more like a dry toilet tissue dispensing system, and yet also takes into account unique requirements of wet wipes (e.g., moisture retention, wet product dispensing).